Ephraim Hardcastle

ROBBIE Coltrane, 66, who weighed 20 stone while making National Treasure, ITV’s bleak drama about an alleged paedophile broadcaster, eats at Edinburgh’s L’Alba D’oro (Golden Dawn) chip shop. He has been known to eat two fish suppers with sausage and a slice of pizza at the counter while a taxi waits for him. On one occasion he ordered double fish and chips, two pickled onions ‘and a black pudding for the dog’ – his pug. It’s a wonder publishers haven’t asked him to do a diet book. THE surprising return of Martin Bashir, 53, to the BBC as a religious affairs correspondent intrigues courtiers in Buckingham Palace. In 1995, he plotted with Princess Diana to bypass them and conduct secretly the sensational ‘There were three of us in this marriage’ interview for Panorama. The result: a breakdown in relations between the palace and the BBC. And the Corporation lost its exclusive right to produce HM’s Christmas Day broadcast. BENEDICT Cumberbatch, 40, questions fellow actor Tom Hiddleston, 35, both pictured, for Interview magazine. (The latter appeared in the Mail wearing bondage-style gear yesterday.) Cumberbatch: ‘I should first of all thank you, Tom, for taking this time.’ Hiddleston: ‘Thank you, Benedict. We should just thank each other for our time.’ And they wonder why they’re called luvvies. OASIS brothers Noel, 49, and Liam Gallagher, 44, are feuding again. Liam says he’ll stop the pocket money of his sons, Lennon, 17 and Gene, 15, if they attend a Noel gig, adding that he might also ‘dish out loads of old photos of them with nappies full of **** and put that on the internet’. Charming! Is Esther Rantzen still running Childline? HOLLYWOOD lothario Warren Beatty, 79, who now publicly denies bedding almost 13,000 women in his lifetime, admits Madonna was among his conquests. During their ‘first kiss’ the lubricious rascal allegedly declared, ‘Houston... we have lift off.’ THE Duchess of Cambridge travels with £300-a-day hairdresser Amanda Cook Tucker, who also attends to the modest tonsorial demands of Prince William. This is relatively low budget. France’s President Francois Hollande shells out £8,600 a month on a barber to keep his own, sparse, suspiciously-dark locks in order. JEREMY Paxman recalls in his memoir, A Life In Questions, asking Theresa May, if she was wearing ‘F*** me shoes’ – a vulgar term used by Germaine Greer against the high-heeled footwear of another feminist, Suzanne Moore. ‘Bateman would have struggled to do justice to the expression on her face,’ he says, referring to a cartoonist who liked to depict comical outrage.